Entertaining Tsarist Russia

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253334077
Total Pages : 454 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (34 download)

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Book Synopsis Entertaining Tsarist Russia by : James Von Geldern

Download or read book Entertaining Tsarist Russia written by James Von Geldern and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Companion disc features recordings of popular songs and vaudeville skits performed by some of Russia's most famous singers and comics of early twentieth century.

Russia at Play

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Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501728776
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Russia at Play by : Louise McReynolds

Download or read book Russia at Play written by Louise McReynolds and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An athlete becomes a movie star; a waiter rises to manage a chain of nightclubs; a movie scenarist takes to writing restaurant reviews. Intrepid women hunt bears, drive in automobile races, and fly, first in balloons and then in airplanes. Sensational crimes jump from city streets onto the screen almost before the pistols have had a chance to cool. Paris in the Twenties? Fitzgerald's New York? Early Hollywood? No, tsarist Russia in the last decades before the Revolution. In Russia at Play, Louise McReynolds recreates a vibrant, rapidly changing culture in rich detail. Her account encompasses the "legitimate" stage, vaudeville, nightclubs, restaurants, sports, tourism, and the silent movie industry. McReynolds reveals a pluralist and dynamic society, and shows how the new icons of mass culture affected the subsequent gendering of identities. The rapid industrialization and urbanization of the late tsarist period spawned dramatic social changes—an urban middle class and a voracious consumer culture demanded new forms of entertainment. The result was the rapid incursion of commercial values into the arts and the athletic field and unprecedented degrees of social interaction in the new nightclubs, vaudeville houses, and cheap movie houses. Traditional rules of social conduct shifted to greater self-fulfillment and self-expression, values associated with the individualism and consumerism of liberal capitalism. Leisure-time activities, McReynolds finds, allowed Russians who partook of them to recreate themselves, to develop a modern identity that allowed for different senses of the self depending on the circumstances. The society that spawned these impulses would disappear in Russia for decades under the combined blows of revolution, civil war, and collectivization, but questions of personal identity are again high on the agenda as Russia makes the transition from a collectivist society to one in which the dominant ethos remains undefined.

Popular Theater and Society in Tsarist Russia

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Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520225945
Total Pages : 366 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Popular Theater and Society in Tsarist Russia by : E. Anthony Swift

Download or read book Popular Theater and Society in Tsarist Russia written by E. Anthony Swift and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-12-30 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the fullest and most richly detailed study available of the popular theater that developed during the last decades of tsarist Russia. Swift brings alive the world of Ostrovsky, Stanislavsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy as he examines the origins and significance of the new 'people's theaters' that were created for the lower classes in St. Petersburg and Moscow between 1861 and 1917. His extensively researched study, full of anecdotes from the theater world of the day, shows how these people's theaters became a major arena in which the cultural contests of late imperial Russia were played out and how they contributed to the emergence of an urban consumer culture during this period of rapid social and political change."--Cover leaf.

Mass Culture in Soviet Russia

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253209696
Total Pages : 548 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis Mass Culture in Soviet Russia by : James Von Geldern

Download or read book Mass Culture in Soviet Russia written by James Von Geldern and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1995-12-22 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology offers a rich array of documents, short fiction, poems, songs, plays, movie scripts, comic routines, and folklore to offer a close look at the mass culture that was consumed by millions in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1953. Both state-sponsored cultural forms and the unofficial culture that flourished beneath the surface are represented. The focus is on the entertainment genres that both shaped and reflected the social, political, and personal values of the regime and the masses. The period covered encompasses the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the mixed economy and culture of the 1920s, the tightly controlled Stalinist 1930s, the looser atmosphere of the Great Patriotic War, and the postwar era ending with the death of Stalin. Much of the material appears here in English for the first time. A companion 45-minute audio tape (ISBN 0-253-32911-6) features contemporaneous performances of fifteen popular songs of the time, with such favorites as "Bublichki," "The Blue Kerchief," and "Katyusha." Russian texts of the songs are included in the book.

Russian Popular Culture

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521369862
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (698 download)

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Book Synopsis Russian Popular Culture by : Richard Stites

Download or read book Russian Popular Culture written by Richard Stites and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-08-20 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a side of Russian life that is largely unknown to the West - the world of popular culture. By surveying detective and science fiction, popular songs, jokes, box office movie hits, stage, radio and television, Professor Richard Stites introduces the people and cultural products that are household words to Russian people. Spanning the entire twentieth century, the author examines the subcultures that draw upon and enrich Russian popular culture. He explores the relationship between popular culture and the national and social values of the masses, including their heroes and myths, and assesses the phenomenon of the celebrity from the silent screen star to the latest rock music idol. Richard Stites pays particular attention to the dramatic battle between elite and popular culture and to the intervention of revolutions, wars, and the state in the production and control of this culture.

Daily Life in Russia under the Last Tsar

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Author :
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804710305
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Daily Life in Russia under the Last Tsar by : Henri Troyat

Download or read book Daily Life in Russia under the Last Tsar written by Henri Troyat and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1979 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a vivid account of life in Moscow, "the most Russian of Russian cities," in the year 1903, a year before Russia's disastrous war with Japan and two years before the momentous Revolution of 1905. Though the undercurrents of social change were running swiftly, the surface stability of the Tsarist regime show no indication of the turmoil ahead. The author, who is perhaps best known for his biography Tolstoy, describes Russian life through the eyes of a fictional young Englishman visiting a prosperous Russian merchant family. All facets of Moscow life are covered, from entertainment and night life to family life and the devotions of the Orthodox. We learn about Russia's factory workers and peasants, its soldiers and lawyers, its priests and its city officials, its Tsar and his entourage: what they do and what they wear, what they think and what they dream. Concluding chapters take our visitor to the famous fair at Nizhny-Novgorod, which was held every year from July 15 to September 10, and on a boat trip down the Volga.

Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253347978
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (479 download)

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Book Synopsis Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia by : Olʹga Petrovna Semenova-Ti︠a︡n-Shanskai︠a︡

Download or read book Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia written by Olʹga Petrovna Semenova-Ti︠a︡n-Shanskai︠a︡ and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ò . . . a marvelous source for the social history of Russian peasant society in the years before the revolution. . . . The translation is superb.Ó ÑSteven Hoch Ò . . . one of the best ethnographic portraits that we have of the Russian village. . . . a highly readable text that is an excellent introduction to the world of the Russian peasantry.Ó ÑSamuel C. Ramer Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia provides a unique firsthand portrait of peasant family life as recorded by Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia, an ethnographer and painter who spent four years at the turn of the twentieth century observing the life and customs of villagers in a central Russian province. Unusual in its awareness of the rapid changes in the Russian village in the late nineteenth century and in its concentration on the treatment of women and children, SemyonovaÕs ethnography vividly describes courting rituals, marriage and sexual practices, childbirth, infanticide, child-rearing practices, the lives of women, food and drink, work habits, and the household economy. In contrast to a tradition of rosy, romanticized descriptions of peasant communities by Russian upper-class observers, Semyonova gives an unvarnished account of the harsh living conditions and often brutal relationships within peasant families.

Late Imperial Russia

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Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 1526184133
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Late Imperial Russia by : Ian Thatcher

Download or read book Late Imperial Russia written by Ian Thatcher and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a detailed examination of the stability of the late imperial regime in Russia. Students and scholars will appreciate the lively summaries of the latest scholarship in political, economic, social, cultural, and international history. Accessible yet insightful, contributions cover the historiography of complex topics such as peasants, workers, revolutionaries, foreign relations, and Nicholas II. In addition, there are original studies of some of the leading intellectuals of the time. The late imperial economy is examined through the writings of Tugan-Baranovsky. There is an account of M. N. Pokrovskii’s radical interpretation of late imperial Russia’s historical path of development. The state of the Russian theatre is studied through the lives of theatrical impresarios. Each chapter also highlights a unique interpretation, suggesting new lines of inquiry and research. This book will be compulsory reading for students of Russian and European history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seeking to better understand why Tsarism collapsed in 1917.

Performing Tsarist Russia in New York

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253041228
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis Performing Tsarist Russia in New York by : Natalie K. Zelensky

Download or read book Performing Tsarist Russia in New York written by Natalie K. Zelensky and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-24 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the popular music culture of the post-Bolshevik Russian emigration and the impact made by this group on American culture and politics. Performing Tsarist Russia in New York begins with a rich account of the musical evenings that took place in the Russian émigré enclave of Harlem in the 1920s and weaves through the world of Manhattan’s Russian restaurants, Tin Pan Alley industry, Broadway productions, 1939 World’s Fair, Soviet music distributors, postwar Russian parish musical life, and Cold War radio programming to close with today’s Russian ball scene, exploring how the idea of Russia Abroad has taken shape through various spheres of music production in New York over the course of a century. Engaging in an analysis of musical styles, performance practice, sheet music cover art, the discourses surrounding this music, and the sonic, somatic, and social realms of dance, author Natalie K. Zelensky demonstrates the central role played by music in shaping and maintaining the Russian émigré diaspora over multiple generations as well as the fundamental paradox underlying this process: that music’s sustaining power in this case rests on its proclivity to foster collective narratives of an idealized prerevolutionary Russia while often evolving stylistically to remain relevant to its makers, listeners, and dancers. By combining archival research with fieldwork and interviews with Russian émigrés of various generations and emigration waves, Zelensky presents a close historical and ethnographic examination of music’s potential as an aesthetic, discursive, and social space through which diasporans can engage with an idea of a mythologized homeland, and, in turn, the vital role played by music in the organization, development, and reception of Russia Abroad.

The Twilight of Imperial Russia

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Publisher : Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1787203093
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (872 download)

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Book Synopsis The Twilight of Imperial Russia by : Richard Charques

Download or read book The Twilight of Imperial Russia written by Richard Charques and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-11 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fateful twenty-three years following the accession of the last of the Romanov Tsars formed the prologue to the Russian Revolution, and foreshadowed the motives and mental attitudes of Russian policy today. Richard Charques’s detailed, vivid, and objective account of the reign of Nicholas II is based upon a wide study of Russian and other sources. It is given particular force and liveliness by the portrait gallery of the leading figures of the period; Nicholas II, the Tsaritsa Alexandra, Constantine Pobedonostsev, Sergius Witte, Lenin, Trotsky, Premier Stolypin, Miluikov, and Rasputin. “Striking phrases, fine judgments, flashes of deep perception, flicker through these pages, illuminating the sad, sombre story, which Mr. Charques is not afraid to extend, by implication, into the present.”—Observer (London) “Informative and well written, and the story of the last phase of the Romanovs is...movingly told.”—New Statesman (London) “Mr. Charques writes with great lucidity and elegance; he has also unusual discernment, a healthy sense of historical reality, and a penetrating mind...Scrupulously fair.”—Times Educational Supplement (London) “An uncommonly good book about the decline and fall of the Russian empire—lucid, incisive, well balanced, and extremely well written.”—Chicago Sunday Tribune

Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia

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Publisher : Brandeis University Press
ISBN 13 : 1611684552
Total Pages : 665 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (116 download)

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Book Synopsis Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia by : ChaeRan Y. Freeze

Download or read book Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia written by ChaeRan Y. Freeze and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 665 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book makes accessibleÑfor the first time in EnglishÑdeclassified archival documents from the former Soviet Union, rabbinic sources, and previously untranslated memoirs, illuminating everyday Jewish life as the site of interaction and negotiation among and between neighbors, society, and the Russian state, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to World War I. Focusing on religion, family, health, sexuality, work, and politics, these documents provide an intimate portrait of the rich diversity of Jewish life. By personalizing collective experience through individual life storiesÑreflecting not only the typical but also the extraordinaryÑthe sources reveal the tensions and ruptures in a vanished society. An introductory survey of Russian Jewish history from the Polish partitions (1772Ð1795) to World War I combines with prefatory remarks, textual annotations, and a bibliography of suggested readings to provide a new perspective on the history of the Jews of Russia.

Alexander II

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0743284267
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (432 download)

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Book Synopsis Alexander II by : Edvard Radzinsky

Download or read book Alexander II written by Edvard Radzinsky and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-11-14 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles the Romanov Dynasty tsar as one of Russia's most forward-thinking rulers, documenting his efforts to redefine history by bringing freedom to his country, and describing the series of assassination attempts that eventually ended his life.

Modern Occultism in Late Imperial Russia

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Publisher : Northern Illinois University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501757288
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Modern Occultism in Late Imperial Russia by : Julia Mannherz

Download or read book Modern Occultism in Late Imperial Russia written by Julia Mannherz and published by Northern Illinois University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-15 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Occultism in Late Imperial Russia traces the history of occult thought and practice from its origins in private salons to its popularity in turn-of-the-century mass culture. In lucid prose, Julia Mannherz examines the ferocious public debates of the 1870s on higher dimensional mathematics and the workings of seance phenomena, discusses the world of cheap instruction manuals and popular occult journals, and looks at haunted houses, which brought together the rural settings and the urban masses that obsessed over them. In addition, Mannherz looks at reactions of Russian Orthodox theologians to the occult. In spite of its prominence, the role of the occult in turn-of-the-century Russian culture has been largely ignored, if not actively written out of histories of the modern state. For specialists and students of Russian history, culture, and science, as well as those generally interested in the occult, Mannherz's fascinating study remedies this gap and returns the occult to its rightful place in the popular imagination of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian society.

Daily Life in Russia Under the Last Tsar

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781503620827
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Daily Life in Russia Under the Last Tsar by : Henri Troyat

Download or read book Daily Life in Russia Under the Last Tsar written by Henri Troyat and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a vivid account of life in Moscow, "the most Russian of Russian cities," in the year 1903, a year before Russia's disastrous war with Japan and two years before the momentous Revolution of 1905. Though the undercurrents of social change were running swiftly, the surface stability of the Tsarist regime show no indication of the turmoil ahead. The author, who is perhaps best known for his biography Tolstoy, describes Russian life through the eyes of a fictional young Englishman visiting a prosperous Russian merchant family. All facets of Moscow life are covered, from entertainment and night life to family life and the devotions of the Orthodox. We learn about Russia's factory workers and peasants, its soldiers and lawyers, its priests and its city officials, its Tsar and his entourage: what they do and what they wear, what they think and what they dream. Concluding chapters take our visitor to the famous fair at Nizhny-Novgorod, which was held every year from July 15 to September 10, and on a boat trip down the Volga.

Spartak Moscow

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Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801466164
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Spartak Moscow by : Robert Edelman

Download or read book Spartak Moscow written by Robert Edelman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the informative, entertaining, and generously illustrated Spartak Moscow, a book that will be cheered by soccer fans worldwide, Robert Edelman finds in the stands and on the pitch keys to understanding everyday life under Stalin, Khrushchev, and their successors. Millions attended matches and obsessed about their favorite club, and their rowdiness on game day stood out as a moment of relative freedom in a society that championed conformity. This was particularly the case for the supporters of Spartak, which emerged from the rough proletarian Presnia district of Moscow and spent much of its history in fierce rivalry with Dinamo, the team of the secret police. To cheer for Spartak, Edelman shows, was a small and safe way of saying "no" to the fears and absurdities of high Stalinism; to understand Spartak is to understand how soccer explains Soviet life. Champions of the Soviet Elite League twelve times and eleven-time winner of the USSR Cup, Spartak was founded and led for seven decades by the four Starostin brothers, the most visible of whom were Nikolai and Andrei. Brilliant players turned skilled entrepreneurs, they were flexible enough to constantly change their business model to accommodate the dramatic shifts in Soviet policy. Whether because of their own financial wheeling and dealing or Spartak's too frequent success against state-sponsored teams, they were arrested in 1942 and spent twelve years in the gulag. Instead of facing hard labor and likely death, they were spared the harshness of their places of exile when they were asked by local camp commandants to coach the prisoners' football teams. Returning from the camps after Stalin's death, they took back the reins of a club whose mystique as the "people's team" was only enhanced by its status as a victim of Stalinist tyranny. Edelman covers the team from its days on the wild fields of prerevolutionary Russia through the post-Soviet period. Given its history, it was hardly surprising that Spartak adjusted quickly to the new, capitalist world of postsocialist Russia, going on to win the championship of the Russian Premier League nine times, the Russian Cup three times, and the CIS Commonwealth of Independent States Cup six times. In addition to providing a fresh and authoritative history of Soviet society as seen through its obsession with the world's most popular sport, Edelman, a well-known sports commentator, also provides biographies of Spartak's leading players over the course of a century and riveting play-by-play accounts of Spartak's most important matches-including such highlights as the day in 1989 when Spartak last won the Soviet Elite League on a Valery Shmarov free kick at the ninety-second minute. Throughout, he palpably evokes what it was like to cheer for the "Red and White."

Tales of Imperial Russia

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Author :
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191613819
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis Tales of Imperial Russia by : Francis W. Wcislo

Download or read book Tales of Imperial Russia written by Francis W. Wcislo and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-03-17 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History and biography meet in Tales of Imperial Russia, a study of the late-Romanov Russian Empire, told through the figure of Sergei Witte. Like Bismarck or Gorbachev, Witte was a European statesman serving an empire. He was the most important statesman of pre-revolutionary Russia. In the Georgia, Odessa, Kyiv, and St. Petersburg of the nineteenth century, he inhabited the worlds of the Victorian Age, as young boy, student, railway executive, lover of divorcees and Jews, monarchist, and technocrat. His political career saw him construct the Tran-Siberian Railway, propel Russia towards Far Eastern war with Japan, visit America in 1905 to negotiate the Treaty of Portsmouth concluding that war, and return home to confront revolutionary disorder with the State Duma, the first Russian parliament. The book is based on two memoir manuscripts that Witte wrote between 1906 and 1912, and includes his account of Nicholas II, the Empress Alexandra, and the machinations of a Russian imperial court that he believed were leading the country to revolution. Telling the story both of a life and of the last days of the Tsarist empire, Tales of Imperial Russia will delight and inform all those interested in biography, literature, and history, as well as readers interested in the history of modern Russia.

Serfdom, Society, and the Arts in Imperial Russia

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Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300128185
Total Pages : 636 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Serfdom, Society, and the Arts in Imperial Russia by : Richard Stites

Download or read book Serfdom, Society, and the Arts in Imperial Russia written by Richard Stites and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Serf-era and provincial Russia heralded the spectacular turn in cultural history that began in the 1860s. Examining the role of arts and artists in society’s value system, Richard Stites explores this shift in a groundbreaking history of visual and performing arts in the last decades of serfdom. Provincial town and manor house engaged the culture of Moscow and St. Petersburg while thousands of serfs and ex-serfs created or performed. Mikhail Glinka raised Russian music to new levels and Anton Rubinstein struggled to found a conservatory. Long before the itinerants, painters explored town and country in genre scenes of everyday life. Serf actors on loan from their masters brought naturalistic acting from provincial theaters to the imperial stages. Stites’s richly detailed book offers new perspectives on the origins of Russia’s nineteenth-century artistic prowess.